Boynton Beach soldier, 22, killed in Afghanistan

His mother warned him about the vulnerability of big Army trucks in a war zone.

"I told him, don't drive the trucks, that's how they all get killed," Kimberly Metcalf, of Boynton Beach, said of her son, Army Pfc. Mike Metcalf, 22.

But Metcalf was killed Sunday when the truck he was driving was hit by an improvised explosive device. He was only a month into his deployment in Paktia, Afghanistan, with the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C.

"He had just gone in and this happened," the mother said.

Kimberly Metcalf said her only child was aware of how dangerous the Army Hummers were, and how hard it was to drive them.

"He wrote me and told me all these kids are too intimidated to drive the big trucks," she said.

Sunday, the truck ahead of the one Metcalf was driving was struck by an IED and exploded. As Metcalf drove toward it, his vehicle also hit an IED.

"They went to rescue them and his truck blew up," Kimberly Metcalf said. "He did what he had to do."

Metcalf later died of his wounds.

Metcalf attended Park Vista Community High School in Lake Worth before transferring to St. John's Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wisc., where he graduated in 2008.

After working different jobs, Metcalf joined the Army a little more than a year ago.

"He didn't really know what he wanted to do, but he always wanted to go in the Army," she said. "He just loved the structure."

Metcalf, who was unmarried, was "a very fun-loving kid, very happy, very athletic," his mother said. He was on the school rifle team, played ice hockey, and liked to skateboard and skimboard at the beach.

On Wednesday, Kimberly Metcalf will travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to meet her son's body and make funeral plans.